folking.com reviews "When Butterflies Scream"...

What with the likes of Steve Pledger and Will Varley the
last couple of years have seen quite a resurgence in the protest song album on
the UK’s contemporary folk/Americana circuit, but some have been doing this for
years. I’ve written about Trevor Midgley aka Beau on these pages before and
it’s good to report that his latest album, When Butterflies Scream, ably keeps
up the standard. Sounding more than ever like Jake Thackray in his vocal
delivery, it is, as ever, a no frills musical affair, predominantly just him
and acoustic guitar, that allows the comments and commentary to take front of
stage.

It opens with ‘Who Pays The Ferryman?’ not, you’ll be
relieved to hear, a Chris De Burgh cover but, set to a slow mazurka rhythm
etched out on accordion (one of the most elaborate instrumentations on the
album) and drawing on Greek mythology and the figure of Charon who ferried the
dead across the River Styx if they had the coin to pay, his take on the refugee
crisis and the traffickers who exploit it. It’s a theme to which he returns on
the closing seven-minute lyrically harrowing ‘The Immigrant’ with its
recounting of mass executions, genocide rapes and those consigned to risk their
lives in taking flight to see, those who survive being herded into camps while
the politicians debate their fate (“We’re not in the business of profit and
loss!” “Sort out the doctors and leave out the dross!”).

If that’s about effect, then ‘Kill The Idea’ looks at cause
and how military attempts to eradicate an idea in the name of freedom more
often causes it to drift “into different shapes that were harder to shift.”

The album’s title comes from a disturbing image in
‘Gerrymander Street Blockade’, a story of murky political goings on and cover
ups, followed by the waltzing ‘The Song of the Pox Doctor’s Clerk’, a surely
cynical suggestion that some of the Honours List gongs are handed out to, a she
puts it, those who know where the bodies are buried (“It would be remiss for me
here to disclose all names and addresses, but yes, there were those with
reasons to quaver and even to quail; My peerage, it seemed, had been lost in
the mail!”).

Government politics resurface with ‘The Mandarin’, an
observation on those who ensure ministers are all singing from the same hymn
sheet in the service of doctrinal mandates (“Alas we can’t claim to be wholly
immune from bribery, sleaze and the inopportune. So, best we desist from our
scheduled schemes, toppling dictators from dishonest regimes”).

One of the most pointedly barbed numbers is ‘The Promise’, a
timely reminder of how badly the country and the MoD in particular, often
treats those injured in the service of their country once they return home as
it tells of how a hero survivor of his unit suffers from PSTD and ends up a
down and out committing suicide by walking into the sea because “somehow, the
Military Covenant’s promise had simply gone out through the door; And all that
remained was a shirt on his back and the ribbons he steadfastly wore.”

Elsewhere he turns his eye on the use of armed military
drones with ‘The Fire’, calling on Newton’s law that for every action there’s
an equal opposite action and, basically, if something can go wrong it will
(“Missiles pack a punch, and this one didn’t mess around – The fireball arriving
above the speed of sound. In the end, they called it an “unfortunate event”;
chances of it happening? Around fifteen percent”).

Taking an aspiring Stravinsky as an example, ‘Ben &
Jerry’s Coca-Cola Tarantella’ is about selling out your soul (or ideals) to the
devil, or in this case the commercial imperative while both ‘The Nightmare’ and
‘It’s Only Just Begun’ both sound an apocalyptic note, the former a talking
blues response to the election of Donald Trump and the latter, with references
to Nero, Genghis Khan, the bombing of Dresden, the Falklands conflict, Bhopal
and the morning after 10/11, a tale of the Devil fuelling man’s proclivity for
death and mass destruction.

The remaining number, ‘Smilin’ Billy Lye’, is less obvious,
ostensibly the story of a dirt track rider who, envious of Motorcycle Show
stunt champion Crash Donovan (the name a nod to the 1936 Highway Patrol movie)
takes up his Tunnel of Fire challenge with enigmatic results, but there’s a
cautionary string in its tale.

It’s sadly unlikely that this is going to attract the sort
of attention and acclaim accorded the current crop of folk’s socio-political
commentators or find an audience much beyond Midgley’s fanbase, but those who
do seek it out will be well rewarded.

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I'm a singer-songwriter, specialising in 12-string guitar. I recorded for John Peel's Dandelion label (both as Beau and John Trevor) from 1969 to the label's close in 1972. My Dandy recordings are now available again – this time with many bonus tracks – through Cherry Red in Europe and Air Mail Recordings in Japan. Sommor Records in Spain have also reissued the "Creation" album on vinyl, again with bonus songs. I've released a number of albums over the last few years - mostly with all-new material and mostly through Cherry Red Records. However, I appear on a variety of labels as Beau, John Trevor and (under my electronica alter ego) Simfonica. The lyrics for most of my UK-released material are at http://lyrics.wikia.com/wiki/Beau. Much more on Facebook and on my website at trevormidgley.com